Thanks, I'll try that. I have discovered something even weirder. The scratching noises are present after mastering in Magix, once I export to MP3 they are gone. I'll keep you posted, thanks for responding.

@Joachim-Vinson

I think your latest post points to the issue being with your audio driver, as suggested by @SP.

Assuming you are mastering to .wav format, it would seem your computer cannot handle the date throughput of that format. .mp3 has a much reduced data rate/throughput when compared to .wav; hence your computer can handle it without those scratching noises!

Are you using an ASIO audio driver?

Jeff
Forum Moderator

The scratching noises appear within Magix. If I play the piece before it is fine, then I use Mastering Suite but don't export. If I hit play while still in Magix the scratching noises appear. Yes I am using Asio audio driver and have done so ever since I started with Magix in March 2022. Before the update there were no noises after using Mastering Suite. I'll go through all the above suggestions and then report back :-) Thanks!

@Joachim-Vinson

Hi

As the noises occur during playback in the program and not on the exports, this would suggest that the audio buffer sizes are too small - these are the settings I use:

Try increasing the lower 2 values one click at a time, the noises should disappear.

HTH

John EB
Forum Moderator

My buffers were half the size. I increased them but unfortunately that wasn't the solution. Still, thanks for alerting me to one possibility.

@Joachim-Vinson The buffer settings above are not for the ASIO driver. The ASIO buffer settings can be found in the ASIO driver settings. Open the driver settings by clicking on the Advanced button. Try something large at first, for example 2048 samples. Reduce only, if you don't get any sound corruptions.

I've been having the same problem for most of the day. I worked for several hours without any problems and then on playback noticed the clicking/scratching sounds. After reading this thread I made the suggested changes and it seemed to have worked. However, on returning to it a couple of hours later the same problems re-emerged. On the one occasion I was able to remove the problem the sound of one of the tracks changed dramatically. Now I can barely get the program to stay open long enough to try much else as it is repeatedly freezing and/or crashing.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you'll be able to solve it. Unfortunately I am too much of a music production beginner to be able to help.

@Campbell-McMahan Here are some general tips:

First of all, in case you encounter such problems always try to restart the computer. This can do wonders. Make sure you select the Restart option and not the Shut down option!

Next, make sure all pending Windows updates are installed. Sometimes Windows only installs an update halfway through which can lead to massive problems.

Also, don't install the newest Windows updates right away on the day of release in case they are bugged. The same is true for Music Maker updates. Better wait some time.

Try to update all drivers of your sound devices. Check the website of your computer manufacturer for the newest downloads.

If nothing of this helps you might try downloading and installing different ASIO drivers, for example the FL Studio ASIO driver (which you can get by installing the free FL Studio demo) or ASIO4ALL.

If something sounds very different after changing the driver settings, you might have changed the sound output to a device which has "enhancements" enabled, like EQ or compression. Usually ASIO playback in a music creation software will give you the pure sound while playing an audio file in Windows can sound very different depending on your Windows sound settings.